Today we finished up some loose ends with our Chairman’s essay. The deadline for Chairman’s and for some scholarships is quickly approaching.
Meet chain-man, a new friend of our team. Chain-man was created when we dismantled our drive train for what must be the 10th time. Each time we reassemble it, we realize that something’s missing. We’re getting a lot of practice which will be very valuable for our pit crew!
Our team has no machine shop access at school, so we’ve had to get lots of work done via our sponsors. We want to thank Transformix Engineering, one of our gold level sponsors, for helping us out with machining and welding today. We do have access to a bending machine at school, and we’ve been working with Lexan to make various robot parts. We need to carefully lay out the pieces, then cut them out.
After we cut the Lexan, we need to file it smooth, and then we put it in the bender.
We’re working also on our electrical system. Thanks to Kraftwerk for bending our electrical box for us this year. We’ll be installing our components and wiring things over the next few days.
We’re grateful to parents and families who continue to support us as we work long hours building robots. Tonight we were fueled by quiche and ice cream sandwiches. Delicious!
We’re looking forward to another productive day tomorrow.
Others worked on soldering components onto the new circuit boards that came in the mail from our sponsor 
We’re excited to have our name on our circuit boards!
On the other side of the room, we knitted away on our top secret knitting project. Little by little, it is growing, thanks to the efforts of many knitters!
More machining was done today at Queen’s University. We’re thankful to Queen’s for helping us get all of our machining done in such a short time.
Of course, when we have new parts, there’s going to be a lot of filing. Some of us are experts at filing!
We cut pieces today for welding projects tomorrow. It takes a lot of planning to have everything done on time to be put together.
All systems are important. We don’t want to forget pneumatics! We’re investigating what parts we have, and what parts we need.
To help with our research, we examined the pneumatics from last year’s robot.
Despite the long hours and the chaos of week 5, we’re still smiling!It’s Remi’s birthday. He’s smiling too!
We cheeseholed lots of metal…
…then we deburred and filed everything so nobody gets cut.
We greased up some gears…
…then we reassembled the gears, with the help from a video.
The case was cheeseholed too, so we had to tape it up so nothing will get in.
Some of us started to work on our electrical box.
While others did some physics.
Out in the hallway we continued to work on bumper painting.
Painting is exhausting work!
We were happy to share our workspace today with the 
The test chassis got used again by our programmers to test some code.
4. Tweedles can knit!
We tested, and the robot and brace JUST fits through the door.
They look good–no duct tape or electrical tape yet!
While all of the robot work was going on, we had several computers showing the webcasts from various regional competitions (
By 3:00PM all luck had changed. Our connectors had arrived! (Digi-Key has amazingly fast delivery).
…others had to be patched a bit. Finally at 11:30 we got out our box of treasures, unopened since kick-off. The box that we were now allowed to open and use.
We ziptied moving parts so they wouldn’t get damaged, we decided what parts to include in our withholding allowance, and then we bagged and tagged our robot.
Many thanks to Jeff, from 
It’s especially fun when little ones join us. The innertubes are EVERYONE’s favourite toy!
Our mentors are working hard to keep everyone motivated, productive, and friendly. They help us solve our problems…
2:03AM Some of us are resorting to 30 second naps to re-energize! We’re wondering how many of us will be feeling enthusiastic at 10AM….
Overheard through the wee hours of the morning…. (note: there are many references to WIRE strippers….just to clarify)
2:35AM “But what about the strippers…I only care about the strippers” -Mike (Queen’s Mentor)
We hope you have had as enjoyable and productive a night as we have.
